The worry divide

I am not an overprotective parent. I believe in dirt and scrapes and bruises. I don't carry that antibacterial gel with me. I don't even carry Band-Aids. I let my kids climb alarmingly high at the playground. I let them wrestle and eat things that have fallen on the ground (and stayed there for more than 5 seconds). But I do have limits.

Yesterday the Mister and I walked to daycare together to pick up the kids. Since I used to have a commute, this has always been the Mister's provenance. He picks them up and walks them home. Which had always seemed like a good thing.

Until he says this: "I let them get out here and climb the fence." At that moment we are standing in front of a shuttered auto mechanic shop surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence topped with three rows of rusty barbed wire. Oliver jumps out of the stroller and scales the thing like a monkey until his perfect butter-like chin is resting over a rusty three-pronged barb. All that stands between him and an accident too awful even to imagine are his teensy little arms with their teensy little quivering biceps. Reader, I am horrified.

I've written before about my own accident-prone childhood, but what I may not have mentioned is that one of my worst injuries, the one that put me in an ambulance at age five, was from slipping while climbing a chain link fence and ripping open the tender inside of my elbow on the nasty, pointed top.

When I express my horror, the Mister does a little shrug like I'm just working myself into some sort of hysterical mom-frenzy, like I am completely off my chicken for thinking that the combination of sharp rusty fence and distracted toddler could possibly come to a bad end.

It's the same shrug I got when I freaked out after the Mister tried to take Oliver (who can't swim) kayaking on Tomales Bay without a life jacket. It's the shrug that says, "I'll humor you now, you raw bundle of unchecked worry, but as soon as you turn your back, me and the kids are going to ride our dirt bikes up the coast to go abalone diving with a bunch of guys I met at a halfway house."

Reader, I am worried.

Sailing, take me away

Number 9? Check.

A 10-foot Laser totally counts, especially on a 80 degree day on Tomales Bay.

A thing I like

Chubby, bald guys singing about sailing and burning candelabras on stage. Seriously, I like this song. It reminds me of being young, before I cared what other people thought of my musical tastes.

Quesadillas, the Solar System, and Michael Jackson

My dad and brother are in town and we are out in West Marin living the good life (there are oysters and wine and Cowgirl Creamery cheeses in our future so I am happy).

Whenever my dad is out, he tests my kids on their language skills. My kids go to Spanish immersion daycare and are getting quite good at their second language, something my dad is really into it. He's always asking me what they can say and understand and testing their comprehension. He likes to test kids. During the summers he used to make me do my times tables in Roman numerals and write essays about the solar system (mine explained in exquisite detail about how the sun circled the Earth). It sounds tortuous but I enjoyed it at the time. I've always been kind of sick about impressing my dad, hence deciding to do my junior years abroad in Hungary. Hungary? No one goes there.

Anyway, today in the minivan on the way to West Marin he was testing Maggie. And for the most part, she was doing pretty well.

Dad: Como se dice "cat" en Espanol?

Maggie: Gato.

Dad: Como se dice "rat" en Espanol?

Maggie: Raton!

Dad (entering a tunnel): Como se dice "tunnel en Espanol?

Maggie: Quesadilla!

It's the three-year-old version of the essay about the sun circling the Earth, I guess.

A thing I like

I leave with this, because, whatever else he was, he was the pop star of my generation. And this is a great song.

The God Realm

My alternate life fantasies are spinning again. It all started with a lovely weekend spent at my aunt's house on Tomales Bay where I got to go running among the oak trees and kayaking through the clear waters of the bay and where I ate oysters and drank crisp, cold white wine and showed Maggie her first sea anemone and "drank" cup after cup of the "tea" Oliver made out of Boggle dice. It is a place of such beauty, it is literally almost painful.  My father calls places like that the "God realm," places where life is extraordinarily good and beautiful and infused with good karma. 

So, of course, instead of just being there and feeling lucky to be there, I start to think about how I can hold on to the God realm, and scratch out a little piece of it for myself.  Enter Buddhism's main tenant about desire and suffering.  I am so, so far away from enlightenment, and so, so close to the God realm (a mere 40 miles!) 

Some of my new alternate life fantasies:

•Moving to Pt. Reyes Station and starting a lavender farm

•Becoming a ridiculously successful writer so that I can move to Pt. Reyes Station and just write

•Becoming a second grade teacher so I can move to Pt. Reyes Station and not have to commute

•Living in a world where money has no consequence so I can move to Pt. Reyes Station and just stare out the window eating oysters and drinking crisp, cold white wine

My real life is pretty sweet too.

And PS.  I'm so sad about the suicide of David Foster Wallace.  Man!  What a terrible thing.  I got to meet him a couple of times when I used to host literary events, and despite my fears that he would be intimidating and cooler-than-thou and just way dismissive of a little nobody like me, he was one of those extraordinarily kind, polite, interested people. He remembered names.  I always really like that in a person.